The present invention relates generally to group policy management in an enterprise computer network and, more specifically, to automated techniques for backing up and restoring group policy objects from multiple network domains.
A group policy object is a collection of settings for defining configurations for both servers and user machines. Local policy settings can be applied to all machines and for those that are part of a domain. For Windows-based platforms, the group policy object is associated with selected Active Directory containers, such as sites, domains or organizational units. A domain is a single security boundary of a Windows-based computer network. Every domain has its own security policies and security relationships with other domains in the Active Directory. Group policy provides centralized management of computers and users in an Active Directory environment. A Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) is a Microsoft-provided tool that includes a set of scriptable interfaces for enabling a user to create a group policy object that defines registry-based policies, security options, software installation and maintenance options, script options and folder redirection options. The GPMC can manage both Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 domains with Active Directory. However, the scripts that are bundled with GPMC are console driven and not switchable for large scale backup and restore operations.
There is a need for an automated method for backing up group policy objects on a periodic basis and restoring specific group policy objects in a disaster recovery situation for a large enterprise computer network when group policy objects become corrupted.